Lake Hallie is More Than a Hometown: A Sneak Peek at Patti See's Forthcoming Essay Collection (And Its Impact on a Local)

Elaina Myers

 Hometowns are like first loves—like grandma’s homemade chocolate chip cookies, and a grandfather’s embrace. We can never forget them.

Growing up in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, my only goal was to get out of Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, which—for a time—was a goal shared with Patti See. See’s essay collection Here On Lake Hallie: In Praise of Bar Flies, Fix-It Guys, and Other Folks in Our Hometown takes readers on her journey of falling back in love with the place that raised her. Upon learning more about it, I was compelled to reevaluate my small town’s impact on my life.

The way See captures the tenderness of neighbors, the quirks of local bars and the overall beauty in the seemingly small aspects of Lake Hallie reminds me of the mornings my sister and I would spend hours ice skating on the lake behind our house. Creating the perfect rink was no easy task. My father would carry gallon buckets of water down to the bank as my sister, and I meticulously shoveled a perfect rectangular border just big enough for us to do laps. We would then dump the buckets inside the boundary line and my father would rake it across the surface trying his best to fill any imperfections in the ice.

Eventually, the neighbor boys in surrounding houses would carry down their mangled hockey nets as the girls laced up the pink and white laces of their figure skates. And then, the competitions would commence. Squeals of laughter echoed up the embankment to our house as we each took turns spinning and twirling on the ice to be crowned best figure skater, (although we all knew my sister was the reigning champion).

““As I got older, I really began to recognize what I treasured so much about the Chippewa Valley. The essays span from around 2009 to the present, so I talk about a lot of big moments in my life that not only capture what I’ve been through but what the spirit of Lake Hallie truly is.” ”

— Patti See

 Childhood memories like this are packed into See’s book as she shines a light on the charming people she grew up with and the struggles she had entering adulthood as a mother and daughter of a parent with Alzheimer’s. “As I got older, I really began to recognize what I treasured so much about the Chippewa Valley,” explains See. “The essays span from around 2009 to the present, so I talk about a lot of big moments in my life that not only capture what I’ve been through but what the spirit of Lake Hallie truly is.”

 See writes a monthly column for the Eau Claire Leader-Telegram called Sawdust Stories, where many of the articles from her book were first published. Much like her book, the articles explore themes of motherhood, nature, childhood, and her various connections to the Lake Hallie and Chippewa Falls. In addition to being a prolific writer, See is also an academic advisor at UW- Eau Claire where she helps students plan their schedules and stay on track for graduation.

Reading about See’s strong community values provided me a new perspective on my own town. Skating on that homemade ice rink isn’t just a fond memory but one that features the friendships I created with my neighbors, the hard work and dedication my father had for his children, and the endless love between sisters.

 I think it’s easy to get wrapped up in our monotonous routines and lose sight of the places and people that shaped us into who we are. But See helps us remember. Each of her articles is written with such pride and attention to detail that it’s hard not to apply her stories to our own lives. As easy as it is to disregard a hometown as a set of streets leading to old buildings filled with ordinary people, perhaps it’s exactly those characteristics that makes the places so extraordinary.

 “One of my favorite things about this book is that it’s about the people of this area and a lot of the landmarks that they would know and recognize, specifically Leinenkugel’s,” said See. “It has been rewarding for me to write about the place that I grew up and now live and love, but even more rewarding that these areas will be portrayed to a national audience.”

 It has always been my plan to move away and leave my hometown for good, and that may still be the case. But thanks to Patti See, at least now I can leave cherishing the special influence my town has had on my life and, evidently, the lives of others too.

Here On Lake Hallie will be published in May, 2022 from the Wisconsin Historical Society Press. See welcomes everyone to her book launch party on June 28, 2022, at 6:00 pm on Lake Hallie Golf’s outside patio (in case of rain it will be in Lake Hallie Golf’s covered but open-air pavilion). Join her for cake and a cash bar. See will talk about the book and read one essay. Books will be for sale.

On Discovering America and Its Stories: A Conversation With Virtual Writers Retreat Speaker Carson Vaughan

by Charlotte Gutzmer

Peering over the devoid field that was once a zoo teeming with life, Carson Vaughan wondered how it came to be like this. What had caused the once popular zoo to become an empty-caged ghost town? None of the locals would tell him about the tragedy that had occurred there, but the tension was palpable. Royal, Nebraska and its zoo had a story to share, Carson knew.  But what was it?

Carson Vaughan is an award-winning nonfiction author, freelance journalist, and editor who finds beautiful stories in places often dismissed in what some might call cultural deserts. His debut nonfiction book, Zoo Nebraska: The Dismantling of an American Dream, has garnered critical acclaim (2020 Nebraska Book Award) for its expertly written portrayal of the rural Midwest and the rise and fall of Royal, Nebraska’s uniquely intriguing zoo. On Tuesday, May 11th at 7pm, join him in his upcoming CVWG craft talk: “Distilling The Extra From The Ordinary: Writing And Reporting In ‘Flyover Country’”.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with Carson Vaughan about Zoo Nebraska and his upcoming craft talk. Read on to learn all about his book-writing process, how he discovers stories, and how his experiences as a freelance journalist shapes his view of the world.

Charlotte Gutzmer: Zoo Nebraska is a beautifully written portrait of the rise and fall of a zoo in Royal, Nebraska that explores the dynamics between humanity, animals, and politics. Where did you encounter this history, and what drew you to writing about it?

Carson Vaughan: I had never heard of Royal, Nebraska, or its infamous roadside zoo until 2009. My girlfriend and her mother were giving me a personal tour of northeast Nebraska, and as we passed through Royal, roughly 30 minutes from their farm, they casually mentioned a shooting and somebody named Reuben. I didn't know a single detail, had never heard of this tragic event, and immediately had more questions than they could answer. We pulled off the highway to take a closer look at the derelict zoo, and as luck would have it, the state of Nebraska had placed a small flyer on the chain link fence advertising a public auction to be held the very next weekend. Still sniffing around for an appropriate senior journalism thesis, I drove back the next weekend. It would be another few weeks, maybe months, before I understood exactly what story the story was, but I left that auction buzzing with excitement. The locals refused to discuss the day the chimpanzees broke loose, and it was exactly that resistance that let me know I was on to something. The more time I spent in Royal, the more certain I was that beneath the novelty of an exotic animal escape in rural Nebraska there lay a gripping story reflective of the human condition at large--a story, in other words, that would hopefully resound beyond the community of Royal alone.

CG: As a freelance journalist from central Nebraska, you seem quite skillful at depicting the compelling charm of life in rural communities. Moreover, your sense of time and place seems to be rooted not only in the history of the area, but also in the people who inhabit it. Can you share a bit about how these skills developed throughout your experiences writing about this region?

CV: Not every story allows for it, but in my longform work, I tend to get a little obsessive about the context. In the case of Zoo Nebraska, I could hardly tell the story of this bizarre roadside zoo without explaining the man who first willed it to life, and I could hardly tell the story of its founder without explaining the community that raised him. Oftentimes these contextual details fall to the cutting room floor, but I firmly believe that one's grasp of the history and culture of a place -- whether or not they're frankly acknowledged in the text -- is reflected in the tone of the prose. As a reader, there are few things I find more compelling and refreshing in a piece of writing, be it fiction, nonfiction or poetry, than a confident and authoritative voice, and that sort of authority is often hard won. In short: context informs everything, and I try my best to develop that context as thoroughly and practically as possible in order to give my readers a better sense of who, exactly, they're dealing with.

CG: In the description of your upcoming craft talk, you write that it’s “easy to dismiss America’s rural spaces as cultural deserts, devoid of the intrigue we afford the cities or the coasts or the exotic landscapes of the imagination.” Can you share a bit about how your writing of Zoo Nebraska may have led you to this conclusion, or how this conclusion influenced your writing of Zoo Nebraska?

“I was born and raised in a small town in central Nebraska, and the local histories I grew up with were every bit as exciting as the histories that Hollywood and national media typically portrayed. I carried that philosophy with me as I approached Zoo Nebraska, and yet in my decade of reporting on this zoo and this community, that philosophy was further solidified every day”

 CV: You've posed a great question, because both of these variations are accurate. Well before approaching Zoo Nebraska, I had a pretty firm conviction that American culture was neglecting -- much to its detriment -- the stories of rural America. I was born and raised in a small town in central Nebraska, and the local histories I grew up with were every bit as exciting as the histories that Hollywood and national media typically portrayed. I carried that philosophy with me as I approached Zoo Nebraska, and yet in my decade of reporting on this zoo and this community, that philosophy was further solidified every day. As the full picture of Zoo Nebraska developed, I understood that all those universal themes that make a great story were alive and well in this town of 65 people.

CG: Zoo Nebraska examines the relationship between humans and animals—how does your relationship with animals and nature influence your work?

CV: You're not wrong in your assertion that Zoo Nebraska examines the relationship between humans and animals, but if I'm being completely honest, I was always much more engaged with the relationship between humans and other humans. Between Dick Haskin and his father, or Dick Haskin and the Jensen family. Or between the Jensen family and Kenneth Schlueter. Between the zoo board members and the volunteers. Between the locals and the outsiders. All that said, there was an undeniable bond between Dick Haskin and Reuben the chimpanzee, and to ignore that particular dynamic would have been not only a lost opportunity, but an inaccurate portrayal of nearly every aspect of the zoo. Nothing in Zoo Nebraska would have played out were it not for Dick's initial love of Reuben, which painted his every move for the next two and half decades. 

I'm not sure my own relationship with animals influenced my work to any serious degree -- I have a dog but don't consider myself an animal guy by any stretch of the imagination -- though I am incredibly concerned about our environment and the natural world. Part of my fascination with Dick's story is the purity with which he approached working with great apes. When he first learned about their endangerment, and the destruction of their natural habitat, he devoted himself to the cause and never looked back. Sadly, that drive was corrupted by time and circumstance, and what began as an incredibly admirable dream ended in the death of three more chimpanzees.

CG: What are the rewards and difficulties of being a freelance journalist? How does one even begin?

“The rewards of freelancing are manifold: the freedom to pursue your own interests, the flexible schedule, the opportunity to work with so many different editors and publications and across multiple mediums. On the other hand, the pay often fluctuates wildly, and the grind never stops”

 CV: The rewards of freelancing are manifold: the freedom to pursue your own interests, the flexible schedule, the opportunity to work with so many different editors and publications and across multiple mediums. On the other hand, the pay often fluctuates wildly, and the grind never stops, and it can often be a lonely pursuit, removed as it is from a traditional workplace where you'd be regularly interacting with peers and coworkers. I began immediately after graduate school by pitching as many stories as I could every week. Only a tiny percentage stuck, but those that did often led to my next assignment. The first few years were hardly profitable, but I've slowly climbed that hill and am still climbing it today. Some weeks are easier than others. And some weeks never end.

CG: Many of your essays, as well as your book, focus on fascinating stories discovered in unexpected places. How do you know when something is “story worthy?” And what draws you to uncovering these stories in rural culture most of all?

CV: I'm drawn to rural stories because they're so rarely told, and when they are, they're often told poorly or by outsiders with no real understanding of the cultural milieu they're representing. I'm not sure I can pinpoint one single trigger, but I do feel a mission to bring these rural stories to a larger audience. That said, I feel no obligation to write purely positive stories. I'm not a public relations manager or booster for rural America, but I do feel that rural America has been simplified to a detrimental degree. Whether positive or negative, I consider any story that complicates our understanding of rural America a win for America large.

CG: As your award-winning debut nonfiction book, Zoo Nebraska has seen a lot of success and acclaim. What advice would you give to someone who is writing their debut work of nonfiction?

 CV: Allow yourself to ask stupid questions and keep asking stupid questions until they don't sound stupid anymore. Read widely. Read fiction and poetry, too. And always remember that you're writing about real people with very real lives. Your final portrayal may not be entirely rosy, but it should be true, and it should always be approached with empathy.

So what are you waiting for? Register today for Carson Vaughan’s craft talk so you, too, can learn how to distill the ‘Extra’ from the ‘Ordinary’.

On Authenticity, Freedom in Form, and Imitation Crab: A Conversation with Katie Vagnino

 What is authenticity? In a culture that loves reality shows and movies “based on a true story,” yet puts on a facade for social media and our everyday lives, what’s real? What’s simply an “imitation” of the truth? In her new book Imitation Crab, poet Katie Vagnino explores questions of artificiality versus authenticity while maintaining a playful, humorous tone.

Katie Vagnino is a poet and a former professor at UW-Eau Claire. She is now based in the Twin Cities and working in marketing, yet her passion for teaching, creative writing, and poetry are still very apparent in her life. I had the opportunity to chat with Vagnino over the phone about Imitation Crab, releasing February 5th, 2021, as well as her perspective on the freedom that poetic forms provide, inspiringly weird critters and creatures, and collaborative cover art. Enjoy the interview below, and preorder your copy of Imitation Crab now on Finishing Line Press here!

Elise Eystad: Imitation Crab, what a fun title! I read the title poem on your website, and wondered, what was the inspiration behind titling the book with that poem? Does it hint at a general theme throughout the poems included?

Katie Vagnino: I decided to make that the title because I'm a fan of that poem, but I also think it reflects the themes echoed in the collection; questions of authenticity and how we determine what's real and what’s fake or artificial. Poetry as a genre gets accused of being off-putting or alienating because of some of the artifice that goes into it. Poems sometimes have rhyme or meter and it’s a little less natural than normal speech, right? That can make people suspicious of poetry. That’s kind of a meta-explanation of the title. More to the point, it's a trend that interests me: in our era we seem obsessed with truth and reality—whether we're having conversations about fake news or reality shows—and you see things marketed as being “based on a true story.” As a culture, we’re kind of obsessed with the idea that there’s more value if things are real. And also, just in our everyday lives, I imagine a lot of us are trying to live authentically or according to some sort of truth that is meaningful to us. I think that that’s something that bubbles up in the book: questions about where we may be performing in our lives, like playing different roles depending on where we are and who we are interacting with. Sometimes those roles are prescribed by gender or other things that relate to identity. I also just genuinely thought it would be fun to have a quirky title. There’s a lot of very serious poetry titles out there, and I just wanted something playful and a little bit weird. There's some humor in some of the poems, so I wanted that to be reflected in the title, as well.

EE: What would you say some of the main themes of the book are? Are there consistent things that inspire your poetry?

“Not all of it is necessarily autobiographical, but most of my poems are pretty narrative. I like to tell stories or at least hint at them. ”

KV: Like I said, there are considerations of artificiality versus authenticity. There is also a feminist bent to the poems. I think I’m just drawn more to women's perspectives, women’s stories. Something that I didn't really intentionally do, but that became apparent as I was putting it all together, is that there are also a lot of small creatures and insects [in the book]. I'm not sure what that necessarily means, per say, but it seems to be a trope. For example, I have a sonnet about oysters, and there's some other critters that come up. In terms of imagery, it seems to be something I'm drawn to. There’s a poem called “Small Mammals of Tree Haven” about creatures that are in a diorama that I saw when I was in Rhinelander, WI. It’s all about weasels, voles, and other little weird animals that populate the Northwoods forest.

Obviously, there are also poems about relationships and family. Not all of it is necessarily autobiographical, but most of my poems are pretty narrative. I like to tell stories or at least hint at them. Stylistically, there's definitely a lot of formal pieces. I do tend to write more in verse forms, like sonnets, sestinas, villanelles. There is some free verse in the collection, too, but I’d say one of the hallmarks of my style is narrative formalism.

EE: I was going to ask about some of the poetic techniques and devices that you use. It seems that you like more of the formal side of poetry!

“I feel like it actually can be paradoxically freeing to have some constraints to work with. Free verse can be a little daunting, because you have literally all possibilities open to you...”

KV: Yeah, I feel like it actually can be paradoxically freeing to have some constraints to work with. Free verse can be a little daunting, because you have literally all possibilities open to you. Sometimes by having some rules or guidelines, you wind up making more interesting, unusual, or surprising choices, which can be exciting. If you’re not having to think about rhyme, meter, or a repeating word in a particular place, I find that a little bit paralyzing; it's like too much freedom. I also think the things I might come up with aren’t necessarily as interesting as how my mind works if I'm working within a form.

Sound is also really important to me. My poems don't necessarily have a lot of rhyme, which is what people tend to think of when they're thinking about sound in a poem. But there are a lot of other tools and devices that can make a poem musical. All the same things we think about and talk about with music apply to poetry, in terms of rhythm and pacing. You can use sound to speed up how a reader moves through a poem or slow them down, so modifying sound impacts tempo, if you will. Also, just how the words sound, how they feel in your mouth, how your ear interprets different sounds makes a difference. Long vowel sounds have a very different impact than a lot of short plosives syllables, right? There's a reason that expletives have hard consonants: it gives them more impact. So, basically I believe the words, the music, and the sound of the poem should tell the story of the poem, ideally. Whatever the poem is about should in some way be reinforced or expressed in the music of it.

EE: Yeah, definitely! I like that a lot. So, this is your first published collection of poetry. Can you walk me through the process of getting to this point?

KV: A chunk of the poems came from my MFA thesis. As part of getting my MFA in Creative Writing, my final project was a book-length project. This book is not that project, but some of the poems started there; I'd say a lot of them started there, though they changed. I continued to edit them, rearrange them, and whatnot. And I continued to write, because it's been almost a decade since I finished that degree. When I came out of school, I felt like I didn't really have a book of poems yet. I felt like I had a start, and then just in the last few years, I started thinking about trying to put together a manuscript, which involved looking at everything I had. A traditional full-length collection is anywhere from 48 to 100 or pages, so I had to decide what I wanted in, what I didn't want to include, and how I wanted to organize the poems, which was which was difficult, because it's not like a novel where there’s a story that is told in some sort of order. It was hard for me to wrap my mind around how it would make sense to cohesively group the poems, so I got some input from other folks. I shared some poems with them and got some ideas around how to think about arranging them.

About two years ago is when I started sending out the manuscript. I started entering it into contests. There are a number of first book contests, or contests for people who haven't yet published a book of poetry. I felt like that was a good way to get my foot in the door. I also just entered contests that were open to anyone. Also, some small presses have open reading periods, where you're allowed to send them your work. That’s the way a lot of poetry books come into the world. It’s a little different than fiction, for example. Poets don't usually work through agents. It’s more direct; you send your stuff and either have to win a contest or be memorable out of a pile of submissions during an open reading period. So, I got a lot of rejections, obviously, and a few promising ones, where they didn't accept the manuscript but said it came close or that they thought it had potential. I was a finalist a few times in different contests, and then this past May, I got notified that Finishing Line Press was interested in publishing it.

EE: Local artist Jen Schultz created your cover art. Were there any specifications that you had or an image in your head for it? Or did she just create something and give it to you?

KV: It was definitely a collaborative process. I found Jen through Volume One and saw some of her work on her Instagram. I liked her collage style; I thought it had a fun, surreal, playful energy to it. We met up in June, in Eau Claire (socially distanced, of course), and I shared some poems with her. We talked a little bit about what kind of aesthetic I was looking for, but I didn't give her real prescriptive guidelines. I thought I wanted some sort of crab representation on the cover, whether that was going to be a literal crab or crab claws. I was curious to see what she would come up with.

After we met initially, she mocked up a few design ideas with some images that she had found. The first image she sent me had those women with the crab accessories, and I immediately responded to that. It’s funny because she sent me maybe eight or ten images that involved crabs, and that just happened to be the first one in the group, and then that one just kept coming back as a favorite. From there, she laid out a few different covers, and then there was some back and forth about fonts and the color palette. So, it was very collaborative; I wasn't doing the work of making the changes, but there was back and forth until we landed on something we both really liked.

EE: Lastly, anything you’d like to share about yourself? What do you do when you’re not writing a poetry book?

“I joke sometimes that I feel like marketing and poetry are diametrically opposed. Like, you can’t get more opposite. Poetry is interested in truth, and marketing is interested in selling and promoting, creating the appearance of value. There’s that real vs. fake dichotomy again!”

KV: I still really love teaching; that's what brought me to Eau Claire in the first place. I still feel connected to friends there and the University, and I'm still doing some teaching. I teach my own monthly workshop, currently on Zoom. Otherwise, my day job is marketing for a digital health company. I joke sometimes that I feel like marketing and poetry are diametrically opposed. Like, you can’t get more opposite. Poetry is interested in truth, and marketing is interested in selling and promoting, creating the appearance of value. There’s that real vs. fake dichotomy again! Also, I’m still in a band that's based in Eau Claire: The Flaming Doublewides, so I sing in my band when there's not a pandemic happening! 

EE: What’s the release date and where can people get a copy of Imitation Crab?

KV: It releases Febuary 5th. You can preorder it now through the Finishing Line Press website. Once it comes out, it will be available on Amazon and the publisher’s website, and hopefully in some local bookstores! I live in the Twin Cities, but I’m hoping to get it to some Eau Claire bookstores, as well.

The Bilingual Life: How One New Memoir is Telling it All

Hayley Jacobson 

There is a new memoir in town, telling the life of a bilingual speaker and all the things she’s done with that skill.

Memoirist Janet Kurtz describes Northern Shores, Southern Borders: Revelations of a Bilingual Life, as a compilation of stories over a lifetime of being a bilingual English-Spanish speaker. 

By fifteen, Kurtz was on her way to Mexico to improve her Spanish, unaware that it would infer itself into a lifetime of bilingual adventures. After that, she went to college and received a degree in Spanish, and now has 30 years of teaching under her belt at both the high school and college levels.

The memoir, which took two years to write recounts a variety of stories, all of which were experiences directly related to her Spanish speaking and translation skills, says Kurtz.

From translating in the ER after a woman was kicked in the face by a cow, to her time in the Central American Overground Railroad, Kurtz’s adventures with translations are far and wide .

For one story, she used cassette tapes she recorded to her parents while she was studying abroad in the 70’s.

“Calls were so expensive.” Kurtz said, “it was cheaper to send cassettes through the mail.”

In the memoir, she uses these tapes as a juxtaposition to her mother’s side in the story, where it felt like she was writing about someone else entirely, Kurtz said.

At the moment, the book is only being sold through the Central Lakes College bookstore.

Kurtz says that she is very grateful for new writers, readers, and for all her supporters.

“We all have stories; you just have to write them down!” Kurtz said.

Poetry and Pandemonium: A Conversation with Claire Wahmanholm

Hayley Jacobson

Claire Wahmanholm is no stranger to sudden changes. As a high school teacher, she has to deal with students, parents, and lesson planning on a daily basis. Balancing this and her writing life, it isn’t much of a leap to say it can be hectic. She reflects this constant change and other feelings through her poetry. Her newest book, Redmouth, is now available. She has one other full collection, Wilder, and a chapbook, Night Vision. She has been published in multiple literary magazines, including but not limited to; Beloit Poetry Journal, Grist, RHINO, The Los Angeles Review, The Paris-American, anthropoid, Fairy Tale Review, New Poetry from the Midwest 2017, and Saltfront.

Wahmanholm was asked to be a speaker at the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild’s “Feather, Flower and Field” poetry event which was to happen mid-April. The event was to focus on poetry and ecology and how the two intertwined but has since been cancelled to better protect both the public and the speakers from catching the strand of coronavirus, COVID-19, that is sweeping the nation.

While Wahmanholm will not be able to read her poetry in public any time soon, she, like many Americans, has more time on her hands. She hopes it will give her time to work on new poetry, as well as configure her classes for an online format, but she more so hopes that it will get better she says.

Hayley Jacobson: Your poems have been published in multiple literary magazines. What was it like when you got the news that your first poem was published?

Claire Wahmanholm: My first real publication was the poem “Dover in November” (a poem of the same title appears in Redmouth, but they’re very very different). It was accepted by Cider Press Review back in July of 2010. I was doing a fellowship in Florence, Italy at the time, and I remember drinking Limoncello that night and then also accidentally sticking my finger in the electrical outlet underneath the desk in my excitement. PSA: don’t drink Limoncello and try to plug anything into foreign outlets.

HJ: What was your inspiration for your second collection, Redmouth? What was your favorite poem to write?

CW: I wrote a lot of Redmouth during my exam year at Utah, and my lists were focused on the elegy as well as the religious and scientific sublime. So Classical elegiac texts (especially Theocritus and Ovid) loom behind many of these poems, as does Lucretius, Pascal, the Book of Job, Julian of Norwich, Freud’s Mourning and Melancholia, and Robert Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy. Redmouth is a lot about how grief pulverizes the self and makes it a stranger to the rest of the world.

My favorite poems to write aren’t necessarily the ones that end up being my favorites to read. But if we’re talking about craft, and which poems were fun to write in the moment, it would probably be one that was really process-intensive (and there are a lot of these in the book!). “Answer” and “Dover in November” both relied on working pretty closely with their source texts (May Swenson’s “Question” and Arnold’s “Dover Beach,” respectively). I love both of those poems dearly, so spending that time with them was really rewarding. But the poems that feature rhyme schemes (all the sonnets, “Lullaby,” “Heliosphere”) were also fun to try to pull off. And the erasures were also satisfying to puzzle out. I love having restrictions to work against—there’s very much that “sense of difficulty overcome.”

HJ: I notice you tend to focus on darker subjects. One of my favorite poems of yours was “The Carrion Flower” that was published in Winter Tangerine. What draws you to the darker side of life? How do you reflect that in your work? 

CW: Oh, I’m so glad you like that one! I do, too. I don’t know if I would go so far as Tolstoy does and say that “all happy families are alike,” but I will say that other people’s happiness doesn’t do much for me. That is, happiness in some way feels more subjective, more private, more inaccessible, than grief does. This isn’t to say it isn’t interesting—just that it doesn’t share particularly well (for me). But for some reason, reading about other people’s grief is far more interesting and immediate. When I’m inhabiting terror or grief or panic, it feels productive to solidify the borders of that experience—to make them more tangible or “knowable” in some way (which is what poetry does, at least for me). When I’m feeling sublime happiness, it feels far less necessary to provide that same level of structure. 

HJ: Titles have always been hard for me. How do you come up with some titles for your work?

CW: It really depends on the overarching project. I rarely think of poems as individual entities anymore—I think about them as eventual characters in a larger project. For the prose poems in Night Vision (and later Wilder), I wanted the titles to not distract from the world-building, so I tried to keep them as uniform and neutral as possible (so they’re mostly “The X,” “The Y,” etc.).

But I also like to repeat titles (four of the above prose poems are called “Relaxation Tape,” for example). In my new manuscript I have a bunch of titles that start “The New” (“The New Fear,” “The New Horticulture”); I have a series about glaciers that are titled “Glacier 1,” “Glacier 2,” etc.; and I have several that riff on the phrase “a land where everything is trying to kill you” (“You Will Soon Enter a Land Where Everything Will Try to Kill You”; “In a Land Where Everything is Trying to Kill Me, I Enter a New Phase of My Life in Which It Would be Very Bad if I Died”; “In a Land Where Everything Is Trying to Kill You, I Teach You to be an Autotomist”). I like using titles to tie the various threads of a manuscript together. Doing this also forms little families within a manuscript, which I’m into. I use it as a rhythmic element in some ways.  

HJ: Your works are both dark and fantastical. How do you walk the line of realistic while tying in fantasy so well?

CW: For me at least, realism is necessary for the fantasy to land. I like speculative stuff when it adheres fairly closely to what we might think of as the “real world.” I don’t want folks to have an excuse to feel removed from the context of the poems—I want it to feel like this world, but with a couple horrifying slants. So, I like to use fairly familiar landscapes (forests, fields, valleys, etc.) that behave in hostile, off-kilter ways. I want the effect to be uncanny in the Freudian sense of the term.

HJ: Poetry is all about balancing life and writing. What are some tips you have for keeping balance in your life when times seem tough—especially right now with the outbreak of COVID-19?

CW: Great great question. I’m very much living in this tension right now (as we all are to various degrees). I teach high school, so I’m only ever able to write in the summer anyway, which leads to an admittedly pretty unbalanced schedule where I have to go go go in the summer, shut it all off for nine months, and then pick up where I left off and hit the ground running again. But the thing that keeps me tethered to the writing life during the school year is reading (which is, really, just as much a part of “doing poetry” as the actual writing is). And that’s what I’m doing a lot of right now—both because I’m reconfiguring my classes for distance learning (which means having to rebuild a portion of the syllabus), and also because reading other people’s stuff takes me out of myself in a helpful way (also it’s helping me live in a steadier world than social media can provide right now). My students are scheduled to do blank verse + sonnets when we start up online, so I’ve been immersing myself in those forms while I put this new syllabus together. There’s this great chunk of lines from Tennyson’s In Memoriam: “But, for the unquiet heart and brain,/ A use in measured language lies;/ The sad mechanic exercise/ Like dull narcotics, numbing pain.”

HJ: What advice do you have for young writers and poets?

CW: Try to write as many different kinds of poems as possible. I think it’s very easy to be like, “oh, I don’t write in form,” or “I don’t write persona poems” or “I don’t write about cities” etc. I get it—once you’ve mastered a certain kind of mode or voice or material, it can be tempting to stay in that space. Who doesn’t like to do what they’re good at? And I certainly haven’t been awesome at this, historically. When I was first starting out, I was pretty sure that free verse was it for me and that everything else was trash. But then in my MFA program I was forced to take form seriously, and I was like jkjkjk this is the best most rigorous thing and everything else is trash. Then I got into prose poems and was like jkjkjk this is it, for real. I wasted a lot of time being resistant to trying new things, and I’d like that time back now.

I also have some more advice at the bottom of this interview , which basically boils down to a) read, b) find a good workshop group, and c) surprise yourself.

A Sneak Peek At “The Story of Your Life”; 6 Questions With B.J. Hollars On His Upcoming Event

Angela Hugunin

The past holds power. It pulls us toward reflection, helps us connect with others, and, somehow, also propels us forward. Yet it’s an elusive beast, one that can be difficult to catch while going it solo. How can we do it justice in our writing?

An upcoming event provides the perfect opportunity to refine our story-gathering skills. On March 10th, B.J. Hollars will give a craft talk titled, “The Story of Your Life: Writing Your Forgotten Past” from 6-7 p.m. at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library. The event is part of the Eau Claire County Reads series. Isa Small, programming and communication manager for the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, shared her excitement for B.J.’s event, connecting it to the protagonist’s journey in A Man Called Ove, this year’s selected title.  “It really is in sharing his past that Ove finds his future,” Isa said of the book. 

But in order to share our past in an engaging way, we could all use a guide. A seasoned storyteller in his own right, B.J. Hollars is the ideal leader for this sort of expedition. He’s the author of numerous books, including  Midwestern Strange: Hunting Monsters, Martians and the Weird in Flyover Country, The Road South: Personal Stories of the Freedom Riders,  Flock Together: A Love Affair With Extinct Birds, and From the Mouths of Dogs: What Our Pets Teach Us About Life, Death, and Being Human. In addition, he is an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and the founder and executive director of the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. He has made story an integral part of his life and loves exploring it with others.

I recently had the pleasure of chatting with B.J. about the upcoming event. He shared insight about the value of writing about one’s past and how that can spark important connections with others.

Angela Hugunin: In some of your recent writing, including a piece for the Washington Post  (congrats, by the way!), you noted that you want to share unforgettable experiences with your children while you can. In Midwestern Strange, you set out to explore legends shared by communities, some of which have a long history. How has writing helped you rediscover important parts of your own past that you might otherwise have forgotten? 

B.J. Hollars: Writing, for me, is a time machine that travels both ways.  Some days I’m digging deep into my forgotten past, other days I’m dreaming up a future I can barely imagine.  No matter which way I’m traveling, I’m always trying to create an experience that will be meaningful to others.  The best way to make that happen, I think, is to continually strive to connect with the human heart.  Sure, you always run the risk of sentimentality, but when you get it just right, you can open up doors that allow readers to explore their own pasts and futures. 

Of course, the past gives us the most material.  As Flannery O’Connor famously said, “Anybody who has survived his childhood has enough information about life to last him the rest of his days.”  There’s a lot of truth there.  The hard part is separating the sepia-toned version of a past event from the authentic version.  That’s where the hard work happens.  That’s where I grapple the most.  

AH: Some memories are fuzzy, faraway and tough to pinpoint. What tricks do you have for conjuring up the past?

BH: Throughout the craft talk, we’ll work through half a dozen writing exercises specifically geared toward conjuring past events.  The fun part about writing exercises is that you’re never quite sure which exercise will trigger which memory.  Some exercises seem geared toward recalling the tough times, others more toward light-hearted moments.  But often, things become messy in the memory.  I’m always astonished when a seemingly simple exercise helps me dredge up a forgotten memory.

One of my favorite exercises involves drawing a blueprint of one’s childhood home.  Then, I ask writers to label the rooms, and attach a memory or two to each space.  It’s amazing what you can remember about your childhood home’s laundry room, for instance, when you really stop to consider it.

AH: I’ve heard that smell and sound are strongly linked to memory. What’s a specific scent or song that sparks a special memory for you?

BH: I have so many!  Somewhere in my bathroom I still have some half-filled cologne bottle from high school.  When I really want to take a stroll down memory lane, I’ll start there...

As for songs, I have different ones for various eras or moments.  For instance, my reflective teenage days were once embodied by Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash into Me” (quit laughing, I’m being honest here!  Ha).  A recent trip to an island off the coast of Ireland is captured by Bon Iver’s “Jelmore.”  Sometimes I’ll create full playlists when working on a manuscript in an effort to get my brain in the time and place it needs to be to write the piece. 

AH: I’ve been lucky to gain awesome writing tips from you in classes at UW-Eau Claire. For this event, you’ll be bringing your teaching off campus, likely with folks of a different age group. What do you most enjoy about teaching in a setting like the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, where more community members are present?

BH: Well that’s awful kind, and here’s the 20.00 I owe you for saying so…JK.  More seriously, one of my favorite things about teaching in community settings such as the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library is the opportunity to connect with all sorts of folks with all sorts of backgrounds and experiences, all of whom share a common interest in the written word.  Of course, such a community can be found in a college classroom, too, but the community courses tend to lend themselves to more intergenerational teaching, which I also love.  The more different we are, the richer the stories.  For instance, once, while a young student asked for help on an essay on the 1940 Chicago Cubs, a non-traditional piped in, “I went to all the games that season!”  The observation lit up the room.  I realized I’d probably never hear such a comment in a workshop again.  Ever since that moment, I’ve been doubly committed to creating experiences for community writers.  We’re all better when we can share our knowledge.

AH: Sometimes I hesitate to write about my life because I’m afraid it’s not exciting enough. What advice would you give to those who aren’t sure their stories matter?

BH: If you’re concerned about potentially “navel gazing,” so to speak, then there’s a good chance you’ll avoid it.  Often, the problem is when people don’t have any clue that their stories don’t resonate with others.  A mentor once told me that the most important lesson we can teach our students is that their stories matter, and that “they all flow into the same river.”  That last bit sort of puzzled me for awhile, but I think I know what he meant.  And I know he’s right, too. 

The writer Brian Doyle has an apropos quote which I think about often.  I’m paraphrasing, but the gist is “Writing is not about you, it’s about us.”  This is the thought I always carry with me.   It’s the safeguard that steers from away from the navel gazing.

AH: In your opinion, what’s the value of exploring one’s past?

BH: Self-reflection is how we get better.  It’s how I’ve become a better teacher, a better writer, a better husband, a better father, and a better human.  Of course, I still have a long way to go on all of these fronts.  In the same way athletes watch game tape, writers return to their pasts.  I don’t think we’re necessarily trying to analyze our errors as much as keeping an eye out for meaningful moments that, when skillfully rendered, might make meaning for others, too.   I guess that’s the trick of this, and something I look forward to chatting about during the craft talk: How do we take a personal moment and make it meaningful art for others?

Join B.J. Hollars at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on Tuesday, March 10th from 6-7 pm for an evening of discovery, writing, and peering into the past!

A Sneak Preview on Elizabeth Evan's Craft Talk "From Acorn to Oak: On Editing, Agenting, and Nurturing Your Literary Work from Idea to Published Work"

B.J. Hollars

Last June, while strolling the streets of Homer, Alaska during a break from The Kachemak Bay Writers’ Conference, I had the great pleasure of befriending editor and former agent Elizabeth Evans. As we watched the fisherman haul in their halibut, we discussed writing, publishing and beloved books. Immediately, I knew we needed to bring Elizabeth—and her expertise!—to the Chippewa Valley. On November 12 at 6PM, Elizabeth and I will be in conversation on a talk we’re calling “From Acorn to Oak: On Editing, Agenting, and Nurturing Your Literary Work from Idea to Published Work” at 6PM at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library. We’re grateful to the library for co-sponsoring this event.

During this event, Elizabeth will provide insight on the vital role of editors and agents, as well as “live critique” previously submitted query letters written by local writers. This is not to be missed!

Elizabeth and I recently had the chance to catch up. Read the complete interview below!

BJ Hollars: Tell us about how you found your way into the world of agenting and editing?

Elizabeth Evans: In my early 20s, I was living in San Francisco, and poking around the writing world in various ways. SF is a wonderfully literary city. I went to the Litquake festival, and to author readings all the time. I interned for the literary magazine Zyzzyva, which gave me a first taste of the submissions process and how editors select works for publication. And then I joined the MFA program at the University of San Francisco. It was there I met a wonderful writer and instructor, Judy Greber, who helped me find an internship with a local literary agency. The internship was a dream. I couldn't believe my job was to read all day. Before I graduated from my MFA program, I was agenting my first projects.

BH: Tell us about some of the books you were most excited to work with. What made those projects exciting?

EE: It sounds corny, but every book I repped was exciting, because as an agent you have to truly believe in the potential of every book you represent. My first sale was Glenda Burgess's The Geography of Love, a devastatingly beautiful memoir, and each moment of progress, from the cover reveal to the first glowing reviews, was special. Another one that stands out is Ella Frances Sanders's Lost in Translation, which was one of my first books to hit the bestseller list. It was such fun to call Ella to share the good news. My role as an independent editor is exciting in a different way. Often what's most rewarding is seeing the ways in which a manuscript improves between drafts, and feeling you've played a small part in the evolution of an exciting work.

BH: What's the most challenging part of being an editor?

EE: Managing a writer's expectations can be tricky. There are certain realities of the world of traditional publishing that most writers aren't aware of. The need for a platform in nonfiction, for example. I approach every project with enthusiasm, and never want to deter a writer from pursuing their dream, but it's important to me that my clients go into the process with eyes wide open and a clear understanding of the challenges they might encounter in a notoriously difficult industry.

BH: What don't most writers understand about the publication world?

EE: So much is expected of writers beyond the writing. Authors must be proactive partners to their publishers. There's a lot of hustle that's required, even once the manuscript is final and off to the printer. It's a full time job. There's never really any down time.

BH: If you could recommend one book that we should all read this minute, what would it be and why?

EE: Oof! Hard question. Like so many, Toni Morrison has been on my mind lately, and I don't think I've ever had a more powerful reading experience than I did with Beloved. That book is a force. It changed my ideas of what was possible in writing. It absolutely blew me away.

See you at 6PM at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on Tuesday, November 12!

Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold: 10 Questions With Dorothy Chan

Rebecca Mennecke 

For Dorothy Chan, the newest assistant professor of English at UW-Eau Claire, writing is a non-stop process; she writes as often as she can. Her reading from her recent collection of poetry, Revenge of the Asian Woman, will be a highlight of the Chippewa Valley Book Festival at 6PM at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library on Oct. 23.

In anticipation of her latest book, we thought we’d familiarize ourselves with her previous book, Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold. Described by poet David Kirby as “steam punk on steroids… plutonium-powered and neon-lit,” Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold explores themes like feminism, Asian culture, food, and sexuality in a fresh way. 

I had the opportunity to chat with Chan about some of the themes she has explored in her writing since the very beginning. 

Rebecca Mennecke: What inspires you to write a poem? 

Dorothy Chan: Lots of things but mostly food, sex, fantasy, fetish popular culture, and Asian American identity. Oh, and power. I think it's important to surround yourself with interesting people. That way, you're always inspired. Sometimes, one of my close friends will say something funny, and the next thing you know, I'm typing up notes on my iPhone. At certain points of the year, I'll have over 200 notes on my phone just from things I overhear, fantasies I have, dreams from the night before, etc. It's the poet's job to always remain awake, alert, ready to take in new ideas.

RM: How on Earth do you title a poem (or a book) that explores so many different elements? Specifically, I’m super interested in your poem “Ode to Psychics, Hookers, Shark Bone, and Free Iced Tea.” How did you decide on the titles that appear in the final version of your book?
DC: This is what I tell my students: aim for titles that are five words or more. Excess. Create full titles that tell stories – that are full of dimension. Back in my MFA, my poetry uncle, Alberto Ríos taught me that "The best line of the poem is the one that I am reading. And that does not exclude the title."

RM: How do titles and the poems themselves work together to create meaning in your work?
DC: Titles should tell stories in themselves. When you open a book of poetry, I think it's important to first fall in love with the titles. Look down the page at the table of contents. Make observations. And then of course, once you read the poems themselves, more meaning is created and observed.

RM: Feminism. Asian culture. Food. Sexuality. How do you weave and intertwine each topic so seamlessly?
DC: I believe all these topics are naturally connected. Intersectional feminism is the way I live my life. It's the way I structure my classes and choose my reading lists. And intersectional feminism is of course linked to sex positivity, along with culture. Food is also this common language for the world. I'll leave this open-ended, but I think you can tell a lot about a person based on the food they eat, the food they prepare, the food they order, and the food they try.

RM: You write a lot about food! It makes me hungry just reading your work. What’s your go-to writing snack?
DC: And Rebecca, you win the award for best interview question of all time! I love Pocky, Koala's March, jalapeño chips, and salt and vinegar chips. If I had all the money in the world, I'd be eating Jean Philippe pastries and macarons while writing. I also love green tea and iced black coffee.

RM: In Attack of the Fifty-Foot Centerfold, you explore some complex relationships with your parents and your family. How do you recommend writers explore complex relationships with people who are important to them through the writing process?

DC: I'm bad, but I'd say don't worry about it.  I find that many times, young writers worry too much about writing about a family member, especially a parent. Again, don't worry about it. Your feelings are valid. 

RM: You write a good number of sonnets in this book. How did you come to like this type of poem? Was there a specific poem or poet that inspired you to use this form?
DC: I could go on and on about the sonnet for days, but I believe the sonnet is the perfect form. Think about it: fourteen lines, ten syllables per line – it's really the amuse-bouche of poetry – it's that palate teaser that makes you want more and more, makes you go on and on. I fell in love with the sonnet during my undergraduate at Cornell. There, I worked closely with Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. In Lyrae's classes, we not only wrote sonnets, but we also wrote sonnet crowns (7 sonnets in a row). Then, over the years, I experimented with this form, from my chapbook Chinatown Sonnets, to what I like to call my specialty – the triple sonnet.

RM: You also break up your poems in this book into three sections.  How did you decide the different sections?
DC: A triptych is just so romantic. It reminds me of the years I studied art history. When writing a book of poems, I think about the overarching narrative, along with the speaker's development.

RM: In your poem, “My Mother the Writer,” you talk about how your mom is a writer too. You also dedicate this book to her! How did your mom help shape your writing?
DC: She's always been undyingly supportive of my career as a writer.

RM: What writers or writings have inspired you?
DC: A lot! I will first say my mentors, Norman Dubie, Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, Alice Fulton, and Alberto Ríos. I'm currently reviewing Rae Gouirand's The History of Art and Lee Ann Roripaugh'sTsunami vs the Fukushima 50 – these are two gorgeous collections. Of course, I'm currently reading my poetry sister, Taneum Bambrick's debut, Vantage, which won the APR/Honickman Prize. I love everything in the Spork Press catalog. I love Richard Siken's poetry. I've been recommending the novella, Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata to everyone I know, since the summer. And, I'm excited for E.J. Koh's forthcoming memoir, The Magical Language of Others, along with my Spring 2020 course reading lists, which include Vantage, along with Mess and Mess and by Douglas Kearney, Tender Data by Monica McClure, Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel, Sour Heart by Jenny Zhang, The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls by Mona Eltahawy, and Long Live the Tribe of Fatherless Girls: A Memoir by T Kira Madden.

RM: You also have strong female and Asian representation in your poetry. What impact do you hope your perspective has on future writers?
DC: Always practice and preach intersectional feminism. 

Be sure to hear Dorothy read from her latest work from 6pm-7pm on Wednesday, Oct. 23

Poetic Marks & A Modern Day Presence: Insight From Poet Jennifer L. Knox

Jennifer L. Knox

By Lauren Becker

Join us on April 10th at the L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library for an evening of surprises, as poet Jennifer L. Knox takes us through a reading and discussion on the surprising nature of poetry. 

In preparation for this event, we had a chance to gain Knox’s insight into what we should expect from the evening.

Lauren Becker: So, we’re going to talk about surprises and poetry. This begs the question - are they pleasant surprises? Or unpleasant? 

Jennifer L. Knox: Hopefully the surprises will be somewhat pleasant, but I can’t guarantee they’ll all feel like finding a $20 bill in your jeans pocket kind of surprise. 

Could you give us a bit of a teaser as to what you have planned for the evening? 

I'm going to read some poems from my books (perhaps even some new ones) and talk about how they surprised me— either by the way the ideas for them entered my brain, in the process of writing them or by the way people responded to them.

Some of us who aren’t as familiar with poetry may chalk it up to archaic, melancholy haikus about ponds. You’ve proven time and time again that’s not the case. What are your thoughts on the presence of humor and jarring language in poetry?

Poems and poets are as varied as styles of music; we each have a different song in our head. And there are different kinds of humor; I enjoy subverting the expectations of the reader—that's the incongruity theory. It's like hard-wiring surprise into a poem, and one way to accomplish this is to use diction and ideas that people don't ordinarily expect to see in a poem. When most people think poetry, they think of poetic-ness, and beauty and truth and ponds, as you mentioned. They don't necessarily think deep-fried Twinkies or mad cow disease. Using language that surprises helps me create an epiphany for the reader. 

When you’re writing, do you ever stop and think “where the heck did that come from?”

JK: Every day, Lauren! Generative writing comes from the same spot in the brain as lying, so when we're generating words on the page, nothing's off limits. It's like that game where you stand in the glass box and try to catch the dollar bills blowing around—you'd grab anything that blows by. Editing happens in the same part of the brain as accounting; in this phase, we must imagine the readers receiving our words and empathize with them.

Many of us who are just beginning our own long journey of poetic writing may look at your work and ask, what path did you take to get here?

I learned to love poetry by writing it. I believe it creates physical sensations in the brain, like exercising. A poem is a puzzle you make that only you can solve. But what has kept me writing poetry is my community of poets and writers, many of whom I met while earning my MFA, but there are others. My poetry people have been my ace in the hole.

What do you hope folks take away from this upcoming event?

I hope they're excited to write and read more poetry!

If this hasn’t enticed you enough, Kathleen Rooney summarizes why we so desperately need the artistic work and insight of individuals such as Knox, now more than ever.  

“In the face of ecological meltdown, art gains extra urgency and Jennifer L. Knox is one of our most urgent ecological poets. In the face of the Anthropocene—the geological era in which we are living, when human activity has irreparably damaged the earth—Knox laments our losses and celebrates what we have left. Her creativity—with its obsession with extinction—is driven, like much creativity, by death, but is animated with an unmistakable life force. The humor and sadness in each of her poems invites the reader to mourn what can never be regained environmentally, and also to make the most of whatever it is that remains.”

—Kathleen Rooney, O, Democracy!

Check out Knox’s latest book, Days of Shame and Failure, here! 

"On What Does Art Depend?": 5 Questions on Craft with Poet Nicholas Gulig

by Alex Zitzner

 I first heard Nick read at the Oxbow in 2017 as part of the Chippewa Valley Book Festival’s prodigal poets returning read, and then was fortunate enough to work with him at the CVWG’s Winter Writers Retreat in 2018. From those experiences, I became interested with his work and its intricacies. I purchased his book length poem North of Order (YesYes Books), read it all during a lonely week in New York while riding the subway from museum to museum, and it got me stoked. Since Nick will be returning to the Chippewa Valley on Monday, March 11th to read at 5PM at the Local Store/Volume One Gallery as part of Bruce Taylor’s Local Lit: Off the Page series, I reached out with a few questions on crafting his latest book Orient (Cleveland State University Poetry Center) to dive deeper into how he approached this body of work.

Alex Zitzner: I never really gave Brian Eno’s ambient work a listen until you mentioned in your interview with Speaking of Marvels that you were listening to Music for Airports while writing Orient and this made me think about the spaces where there is no text within the book and how that creates an environment, similarly to how Eno creates an environment without language. For instance, “Some Pornographies” is laid out over 11 pages with each stanza of the poem being 14 lines, instead of it being one long poem taking up the entire pages it would need vertically. With this, I was wondering what your approach was to structuring the poems within your book in relation to how they interact with the “white” space of the pages?

Nick Gulig: Eno’s idea of music as “ambience” was important to the book in the way that you describe, first because it constituted, quite literally, the physical environment in which so much of the writing of the book took place. But also, and maybe even more so, ambience, as Eno talks about it, de-privileges both the music and the maker in a way that helped me think through what it was that I was trying to do with Orient. As a writer, when I watch/listen to American foreign policy—which the book does, to a large degree—I’m immediately uneasy with the extent to which the notion of genius, the seductive myth that underpins the tradition in which I work, runs parallel to, and is to that extent complicit with, the project of Empire. As an artist, it feels important to understand that the opportunity to make art, to spend the vast majority of a long life painting, writing, making music or whatever, is a real gift, a privilege that most folks in the world don’t have. This fact should matter and be important to you. I don’t mean to sound condescending here, but it really should, like ethically and as a matter of principle and awareness. You shouldn’t take the time it takes to write a poem for granted. I spent four years writing Orient. During that time I did very little else besides read and write and revise and take breaks to think and also not to think. I did the majority of the research for the book at a private school in Denver that I got paid to go to. The tuition there is something like 60 grand a year. Sure, after that I worked, but, like barely. I had a fellowship and scholarships that let me read and write and stare at trees all day. Try explaining that, say, for example, to someone who has to work three jobs because they were thrown into the world on the wrong side of a redline in Milwaukee; it’s do or die in an environment like that. Explain that to the mother of a daughter living in a war zone who has to pack up what’s left of her life and cross the desert, the ocean, in search of something only maybe safer. I wrote that book because I was able to write that book, and when I look too long at what allows me to be able to live the life I do, it’s hard not to notice the extent to which what I have depends upon and is only possible because of what others don’t have. The American middle class, for example, of which I am a part, and which presented me a thousand and one opportunities to pursue a life of letters, exists in large part at the expense of other, intentionally less fortunate communities. We drew lines around those communities, extorted money from them in the form of predatory loans, built taxable white wealth, and then erected a social safety net around the kinds of white communities that I grew up in. This is not a new relationship. And that matters, or, at least, it should matter. It should matter in the same way that the grotesque number of military bases we have around the world should matter to me. The things we do to and in other countries has to matter to me and to my poems if my poems are only possible because of the context I was born in. To what degree does this context depend on the hell that other people have to go through in places I can’t name and that I’ll never see with my own eyes except through the distorting lens of media. That’s the central question behind Orient. On what does art depend? And in the face of the range of answers to that question, the notion of the individual “genius” as its traditionally been championed in the West doesn’t hold up. Individualism, as an ethos, doesn’t hold up, not nationally, and, thus, not artistically. Eno understood this. He understood that we create within the context of our communities, in specific environments, and he let that become his music. Ambience is the antithesis of the Empire because it privileges context, environment, and under-emphasizes I. At the same time, this privileging is also a refusal. It’s a refusal to impose an order upon an other. Said differently, ambience is the attempt to create an opening into which the other might wish to enter, a static softness that is, at the same time, a form of welcoming, a space in which what’s made, or, in my case, as a poet, what’s said, might exist in conversation with the static of the other voices that surround it. That’s what white space is. It’s the static of other voices, other languages, experiences, most of which I can’t understand or make any kind of sense of, but which surround me nonetheless and upon which the privilege of speech depends.

 AZ: As you note, many of the poems in Orient began with, “transcription, (mis)translation, erasure, and collage.” This is very fitting for what the themes of the book are (noise, language, religion, war, politics, the desert, among others), so could you explain what your process were or how those processes affected the poems and their subjects?

Nick Gulig: In part because I had grown sick of my own voice and in part because I wanted to begin with the voices of/noises made by others, I began Orient through a process of transcription, translation, erasure, and collage. After speaking with a professor of middle eastern studies at the University of Denver’s Korbel School, I made a binary list of “energies” or “forces” he helped me understand as coming into contact/conflict in the desert regions on which American foreign policy has focused since I was old enough to know so. For example, my first memory of war, which I try to bring into the book, happened when I was nine or ten years old. Thus, the vast majority of the life that I am able to recollect exists in direct, violent relation to this region and its people, both of which I have little to no understanding. Orient was my attempt to “understand” and I used this list as a conceptual window into a world I didn’t know but to which so much of what I do know, and thus, who I am, is tethered. Using this list, I spent a year transcribing media that I intuitively linked to one side of the list or the other. For example, one of the binary oppositions on my list of was “the sacred and profane.” This meant that I listened to and transcribed Pentecostal sermons, on the one hand, and hardcore pornography on the other. I read the Bible a lot, listened to black metal, studied the Qur’an, etc. It was fun, surreal disturbing. At the end of a year, I had this discombobulated document of language gleaned from discordant sources tethered to my binary concepts, and from that shitshow soup of language I started writing poems in the hope that the poem might become a place where these things might finally work together, make a kind of world together, by which I mean, of course, make meaning.

AZ: When considering negative capability in Keats terms of creating work with a level of uncertainty (which I think once again follows the themes of Orient), most poems appear to be documenting shifts in thought, whether in the present or past, and working through them with that uncertainty. I may be off with that observation, but how has negative capability affected your poems? When did you first become interested with the idea and either implementing it in your work or noticing it was there?

Nick Gulig: I’ve been wrestling with Keats and negative capability since 2009 when I took a class on Keats’ letters with the poet Dan Beachy-Quick at the University of Iowa. My most recent version of this wrestling is to think of negative capability as a kind of haunting, a possessing that is also a possession. In either case, I experience it as an emptying of self. When one possesses, one becomes an other (an Imogen or Iago), when one becomes possessed, the self submits to the possessor. Again, I’m drawn to it because its relational, but it has to move both ways, reciprocally, consensually, like a dance. If it doesn’t, if one privileges one reading of negative capability over the other, it becomes colonial, authoritarian, American. In Orient, the ghost flits from one thought to the next, from one perspective to another, dragging a kind of residue behind it in the way a spider might leave a half-transparent trail behind herself as she moves from one mooring to the next. The web, of course, was also one of the ways that Keat’s tried to think through negative capability. The thing (a glittering circuiting) that’s there but also not there, the absent-presence between the cold hard facts of the world that maps the depth of their connections. It is from these depths, at least for Keats, the poem arises.

AZ: One name that I recognized from your second note was Maggie Nelson and I thought of her poetic essay book Bluets and how you both work in that style. Once again, I may be off, but who were you reading while writing or editing these poems, and how did they influence you?

Nick Gulig: For me, Nelson’s Bluets is the most important book that’s been written in the last two decades, maybe three. I’m teaching it for the first time this semester and I’m super nervous because if my students don’t love it, I’ll hate them and they’ll fail. Most of what I love about that book is the way it moves. Bluets moves like a George Oppen poem, for example, a discrete series of illuminations that exist in the space between the essay and the poem, the certain and the uncertain. Its interstitial. There are these long pauses between the sections in which you find yourself suspended in mid-air before you land again on solid ground, but only for a moment. It’s an imitation of life, in that sense. As such, Nelson intelligently refuses to last too long in any single clarifying claim before her speaking picks you up a second, third, fourth time etc. and carries you off into the absence of not-knowing. She says that it’s a book about the color blue, but really, it’s a book about negative capability, of the struggle to feel at home in uncertainty and mystery and doubt

AZ: I’m guessing you get this question a lot, so my apologies if I am not furthering anything, but what advice do you have for poets, whether unpublished or already having a multitude of books?

Nick Gulig: This is a boring answer, but it’s the only one I have: Read. Buy books, support artists, and read. More specifically, read the things you don’t already like, that make no sense to the you that you are now. If the meager life I’ve lived thus far has taught me anything, it’s that most of what we think we like aesthetically eventually becomes something we no longer like aesthetically. This is a good thing. If your tastes aren’t changing it means that you aren’t changing, which means you’re dying the only death there is to be afraid of, the one that happens slowly over time, in increments, a little bit each day. Art should help us live.

You can purchase Orient here, and North of Order here.

Talking about Academic Opportunities, Family History, and Motivation with Mary Shaw

by Chloe Ackerman

Mary Shaw reflects on time that she spent with her family in Ukraine in her collection, Plum Season: A collection of poetry, prose, photography, and conversations. It was released on December 8th at Dotters Books; she read her book to a warm room full of love and eager ears. Shaw is majoring in critical studies in literature, culture, and film at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. In this interview, she recounts her writing process, academic opportunities, how she kept motivation, and what it was like to show her family what she created. 

CHLOE ACKERMAN: Can you tell me about how you got the opportunity to create and publish this book?

MARY SHAW: I got this opportunity through a grant from the school through ORSP, so that means that I will be presenting in the spring at CERCA as well. Dr. Theresa Kemp, who is an English professor here, actually told me about it and convinced me to apply.

CA: What was it like writing everything in this and putting together this book? 

MS: Putting it all together and writing it was fun, obviously. This is something that I had wanted to do for a very long time, but I am very bad with deadlines, so it was stressful in a way. Also, my self-consciousness would come in sometimes and be like, “this is not good enough,” so I learned a lot about moving forward and pushing even when I felt like it was difficult to keep writing.

CA: Did you write a lot of Plum Season before you knew you had the grant to write the collection? 

MS: Yes, I did. Most of the poems I had written either in Ukraine or immediately once I returned from Ukraine. There are a few things that I wrote extra for this specific collection. Especially the conversations, I went through old interviews I had on my phone and transcribed them, but all the photography was taken in Ukraine.

CA: Did you have any kind of process for this while you were writing? 

MS: I had a very loose process. Again, I’m not good at self-regulating, or keeping myself from going out, and actually staying home and doing it. My process was to sit down for fifteen minutes, and, whether I wrote something and ended up writing longer than 15 minutes or I wrote nothing, at least I sat down for fifteen minutes and tried. Most of the time when I did that, I ended up writing longer, so it was just getting myself into the seat every day for fifteen minutes to do that.

CA: Was there anything you learned about yourself while you were there while you were putting this collection together? 

MS: I learned that I can indeed write okay after a little bit. I learned that I need to push myself if I want to get results, and the outcome is only on me and nobody else. I learned that even once I do write, and I feel that it’s poor, if I keep writing and keep working on it, it does improve.

CA: Did it make you look at the time you spent in Ukraine differently? 

MS: Definitely, I heard some saying a while ago that if you want to write about yourself, don’t write the day after. You need time to process what had gone on and look at it objectively. Looking back after two years and thinking about how I wanted to write this, I definitely thought of my time in a different way. Whatever I was writing, these were the memories that I was going to keep, and these were the memories that would live on. Now that I wrote it down, it would only ever be like that on paper. If I go back to Ukraine tomorrow, it’s not going to be anything like what I wrote. Memories, they keep things alive. 

CA: What was it like for your family to see the finished product of the book?

MS: My dad’s usually a pretty silent guy, but he was very proud. My sister was really giddy. My mom’s funny. I would show her it, and the first thing she would do is be like, “okay I found a mistake”, or she’d be like, “I don’t like this picture, use a different one”, or “I think you used the incorrect grammar there”. But when all was said and done, she was crying at the release, and she cried each time she read it and she was very proud of me. I think they’re all very proud and happy that there is something on paper of our family history.

CA: Did you show Plum Season to your mom as you wrote it? 

MS: Yeah, I showed her my first draft, and then she saw the one at the release party. I didn’t really keep her up-to-date regularly, it was more like I wanted to do it on my own and then show her because I knew she would want to insert herself. I let myself do some things and then let her see it after I already finished.

CA: Is there anything else you wanted to share about your book or about this opportunity? 

MS: I think, just a plug, I didn’t think this would be possible for me to do at my age, and I really encourage any students at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire to ask their faculty advisors about grant work and CERCA. Honestly, while you’re here, you might as well go for all of the possibilities that you have at hand.

Writing, Wine, Women, and Collaborative Community: A Conversation with Jo Ellen Burke of 200 Main Gallery

200 Main Gallery, 200 Main St, Eau Claire

By Chloe Ackerman

I met with Jo Ellen Burke of 200 Main Gallery, and she told me about her hopes of bringing together Eau Claire’s creative community with their future events. The gallery’s latest attraction is Eau Claire’s first wine dispenser. Gallery patrons can buy wine and hang out before local events, read, write, or meet with friends. 

As Burke gave me a tour of the gallery, she explained how Eau Claire’s diverse art scene has seen much of its success because of constant collaboration and support from local artists and venues.  We also talked about the history of the 200 Main Gallery’s building (200 Main St., Eau Claire), how Eau Claire’s art culture has developed over time and the gallery’s new series of literary events focusing on local women writers. Join us on our virtual tour!

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JO ELLEN BURKE: Often people will just come in and work. They’ll work on their computer or read at the bar. During the week we are open Wednesday through Saturday noon to ten or eleven depending on what’s going on. As I show you around, you can see, we have a lounge area with some merchandise for sale, but it’s also a meeting room for book groups or writer’s groups. It can fit about eight or ten people. We really like the privacy of this room; it’s kind of a cozier spot. 

You might like the idea that the whole place used to be a book bindery, so as a book bindery they kept their paperwork in a vault instead of a bank. Paper was precious; there was no way to back books up in terms of a computer, so they treated it as a very valuable source. Now the book bindery’s vault is where we keep our wine.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: Is a lot of the art throughout the gallery by local artists? 

JB: It’s pretty much local artists except for just a few. There’s a sculptor from Wausau, and we have a ceramic art teacher from Sturgeon Bay, and then we have another ceramic artist from Lake Geneva, and the rest are pretty much from Eau Claire.

I do a lot of textile work, so I do the mirrors and napkins, and I like painting on textiles, so that’s a lot of what I do along with some painting. A lot of the work around here is from Terry, who’s my partner and is a sculptor and a painter. Terry sculpts a lot of horses; you’ve probably seen them at the Oxbow. He did the big tall steel horses that were downtown for a while, they called it Tres Caballos. 

Could you tell me what types of events you hold that bring together different facets of the local art scene, and about the upcoming events? 

JB: We will have writers and authors. We are also going to have demonstrations. For example, Terry does live painting, and we auction off what he’s painted. So you can come and watch him; he’s very comfortable painting in front of people. 

We’ve had two musicians here. We like to have live music and collaborate with the area musicians. We had Robin Mink on guitar, and we had Julie Majkowski on flute. We really like the ambiance that that’s created for the arts through music as well.

Our only restriction is space, but it’s a cozy atmosphere; people feel comfortable here. In January or February, we are going to launch what we’re calling 200 Main Mobile, and that’s a means of getting artwork out to the public and to public businesses and nonprofits.

Why did you choose to host events highlighting local women writers?

JB: One of the big things that we believe in is an array of art.  We believe in music, theater, writers, and others, and we know we have so many great authors in town. As we talked about writers, we saw many events that were highlighting the great writers in our area, but we didn’t see too many that focused on women. 

I felt it was timely, and it is a nice opportunity to focus on women writers. We decided that, on the first Wednesday of every month, we’d host something called Women Writers on Wednesday. Now, we’re thinking we should probably do it more than once a month because there are so many great writers, but we’ll just start with every month for now. 

The first natural choice was Cathy Sultan. She is so knowledgeable and articulate. She writes beautifully, and she has this expertise in the Middle East that is really instructive. She was here on the 5th of December. We ended up selling out the first day; we filled thirty seats with free tickets.

In January, we’ll have Patti See. Then in February, we will have Molly Patterson, and we are eager to have her and get to know her a little better. In March, we are going to have Jan Carroll, and we have others that we are reaching out to.

There is such a great writers community in this town. People really support each other, people like BJ Hollars, he’s a wonderful person and I think he’s done a great job collaborating with writers and bringing some light to the talents that we have here. The Pablo Center has done wonderful things for writers, too. We want to really support and continue that kind of momentum. There’s this wave in the creative economy here. I think it’s less of a wave, and it’s embedded in our culture now in a way that is very positive and strong. 

CA: I grew up in Eau Claire, and I can tell that the art scene has definitely grown since I was younger. 

JB: Yeah, it’s such a different city. You might remember just five to eight years ago, you’d go downtown and there was nothing going on. Now, thanks to Volume One and other investors like Zach Halmstad, it’s really made a difference.

Not to get too philosophical, but our community has embraced the arts so well, and I think the momentum for the arts has just really carried on. The factors in the creative economy are somewhat like silos. I think that theater is a silo, music is a silo, the fine arts are a silo, and writing is a silo. I think if we can do a little more collaboration and meshing of those, it creates a better and more fluid art scene. I am hoping that we can be a part of that and show the respect that we all want for the other disciplines of the other types of art, so it’s a win-win.

Poetry, Pizza, and Politics with Eau Claire City Council Member Emily Anderson

Dr. Emily Anderson

by Chloe Ackerman

Under the pen name, Max Howard, City Council member Dr. Emily Anderson wrote her novel Fifteen and Change. This book follows a boy named Zeke, who works at a pizzeria and chooses to join the fight to raise the minimum wage.  I had the opportunity to sit down with Anderson and talk to her about her new book. Anderson described how the topic of having a living wage is significant to her life and experiences, how she wrote the book in several forms, including villanelles, and how it is difficult to identify genre while creating literature. 

To celebrate her book, on December 19th, Emily Anderson will be having a book reading, with pizza, at The Plus on Barstow Street in Downtown Eau Claire.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: What made you want to write the book Fifteen and Change?

EMILY ANDERSON: It’s directly personal to me because I’m a writer and also an academic. Right now, I have a Ph.D., I can get a job, it just won’t be a living wage job. I was involved with a fight for living wages for graduate students and adjunct professors while I was in Buffalo, New York getting my Ph.D., so that was a personal fight. One of the advantages of that fight, or one of the things that I drew strength from, was that we were also coordinated with a Fight for 15 Movement. We were protesting in solidarity with fast food workers and others in the service industry, and that was really great to be a part of that broader labor struggle, so I was kind of carrying that in my mind. The second thing is the knowledge that 43% of kids in Eau Claire schools now are in the ALICE statistics, which stands for Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed. Basically, low income affects 43% of Eau Claire residences, and that’s so many children in our schools. Many kids are in a position much like the character Zeke in my novel who are really struggling with all the problems that economic inequality can create. I wanted to write something that reflected what is a really common experience that gets treated as a very unusual or special experience. The overarching structure of the series that the book is a part of is on social issues, and that is the one I felt I had the most personal connection to. 

In addition to other forms, This book makes use of the villanelle, which are 19-line poems. How did you go about writing this book within such confines?

For me, writing is easier when there are some limits or some constraints. Each little poem is about 50 words, and I had to do exactly 192. I kind of had a sense of what should happen every 20 poems or so to add a movement or pace to the narrative. I mapped that out and then went in and put those smaller pieces together, so it made structuring the narrative really easy, which was great. I write prose fiction as well, and I feel like I learned a lot about saving myself some time by knowing how many words something should be. I normally work more organically so having an imposed structure helped a lot.

Do you see any crossover between your work as a council member and your writing?

So much. I am motivated by the same concerns of wanting to make the world a fairer place and wanting to do my best to amplify the voices of people that are fighting for equality. So that’s definitely a motivation that I share, but I also think that the work of writing is actually really similar to politics. One thing I think of a lot is, the poet, Percy Shelley, who called poets, “the unacknowledged legislators of the world” because it’s creativity that breathes life into an idea and once an idea has life, or momentum, or energy, it captures people’s imaginations that’s what it takes to change the world. I think you see that a lot in politics, for good or ill, that people use language in imaginative ways, and it captures people’s hearts. This stuff happens whether it’s good or it’s bad. It’s a real power.

Is there a person or something that has influenced you a lot in your writing or in your work?

I think I wouldn’t have been able to continue being a writer if I didn’t have amazing teachers, friends, and family members that are always encouraging me and supporting me. I think I have been really lucky with the kinds of relationships I have in my life, and I don’t think that I would be able to persist in a rejection heavy career if I didn’t have people that have my back. 

What do you hope your readers will take away from this book?

One of the things that I try to emphasize in the book is that when Zeke becomes more directly active politically, it’s because he loves the people around him. It’s something that he does with a spirit of both love and also playfulness, and it’s this idea that getting involved and making change happen can be something that is playful and happy. It has to do with love and good feelings and not just like some abstract principle, and it can be a baby step and not necessarily a big step to make a difference. 

What question would you like to be asked that gets at the core of you as a writer and/or your writing?

One thing I’m thinking about a lot as a writer these days is the question of form or genre. I never know when I start a project what the form or genre is going to be. That’s something I learn as the ideas form and come together. I feel like people ask, “What do you write? Do you write fiction? Or do you write poetry?” And I always have a hard time answering that question, because I don’t know what something is until I am done making it, and even then sometimes I don’t really know exactly what it is. I think form communicates with content in a way that makes the genre a challenging thing to pin down. 

Is there anything else you would like to share?

Yes! I have a book party on the 19th of December, and anyone can come. It is going to be at The Plus at 7:00pm, and there is going to be pizza because my book is about pizza. 

Traveling 34 Years through UW-Eau Claire Summer Theater History with Wil Denson

by Chloe Ackerman

Dr. Wil Denson is a professor emeritus of theater arts at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, and in his new book “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”: Director’s Cut he recounts the summers that he spent working with the Summer Theater in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. He describes the plays, the good times, and past traditions, as well as all of the people he worked with over the years. 

Denson’s book allows those who were once a part of Summer Theater, or those who were in the audience of a Summer Theater production, to relive the time that was shared. It is also an excellent record of some of Eau Claire’s art history. In this interview, Denson talks about his process writing this book, how writing books differs from writing plays, and what it was like to relive his experience with Summer Theater while writing his book. “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”: Director’s Cut, can be found at The Local Store, or it can be bought directly from Wil Denson by mailing $15 to Wil Denson, P.O. Box 1828, Eau Claire, WI.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: What made you want to write your book “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”: Director’s Cut?

WIL DENSON: Over the years, a number of people have suggested that someone should write an account of Summer Theater here in Eau Claire. Since I was the person most closely associated with it, the writing seemed to fall, logically, to me.

Also, University Summer Theater closed in 1998, twenty years ago last summer; the time seemed right.

I wanted to ensure that the memory of our work was not lost. I worked with Summer Theater for over twenty-five summers, and it formed a large and important part of my life. For many seasons, Summer Theater WAS MY LIFE. I didn’t want it forgotten.

Finally, hundreds of UWEC students were involved and deserved to be recognized.

This book is nonfiction about the history of the UW-Eau Claire Summer Theater. Although you were with the program for much of the time that it was running, was there any research that you had to do to write this book? Did you learn anything or rediscover anything that surprised you in the process of writing this book?

I joined the company in 1966 during its second summer. And, although I knew and worked with personnel from the first summer and with people from every year thereafter, my memory was not sufficient for everything I hoped to include. 

Therefore, I spent about five months reading old newspaper reviews and articles, interviewing former personnel and examining production programs and photographs.

My greatest surprise in researching came in discovering the sheer number of people who had gone on to success on the national professional stage as well as in Hollywood film and television. I hadn’t actually forgotten these past people, I’d been in contact with many of them over the years, but I didn’t realize how many there were.

In the book, you mentioned plays that you wrote, Company 10 Musical, Life Upon the Wicked Stage, Remembering the Valley, and many others for the Summer Theater to perform. What is your process for writing a play? Does this process differ from writing other types of literature, like this book for example?

It’s difficult to describe the playwriting process in a short space, plus I suspect each writer works differently. I began with an idea that I hoped was viable, a story that would sell tickets. (In choosing stories for Summer Theater, the very specific EAU CLAIRE AUDIENCE was taken into consideration. What were they most likely to be drawn to?) Then I roughed out “an action” – what happens in the piece, the plotting, the setting, characters, etc. For our situation here in Eau Claire, my next step was determining if the idea was possible: could we financially afford the scenery, costumes, etc., and could we find actors, designers, director and technicians who were able to successfully bring the work to our stage. (Some ideas are simply too hard or too expensive to produce.) 

Next, I tried to put the ideas and characters on paper, actually writing the dialogue, describing the characters and scenery, presenting the action, etc. 

Finally, of course came the proofreading, edits, an infinity of re-writes, etc. (A huge advantage in writing for our own theater was the possibility of doing re-writes with the piece already on stage in rehearsal; if we found that something didn’t work as anticipated, I could re-do an act or a scene on the spot and make it more suitable).

The chief differences separating playwriting from other writing forms are its reliance on dialogue, its dependence on visuals and its immediacy. A playwright has to continually show the story to the audience; they cannot tell the plot the way a fiction writer does, the action must be seen. The playwright must ‘place the characters in action, doing something.’ A character is revealed best by what they do. 

Too, the ‘live audience factor’ features in prominently. In a film or novel nothing can be altered; what is written on the page or seen on the screen is set in stone and cannot be changed. But in a play, audience reaction is possible and hugely important; a production changes from night-to-night. A playwright is able to take advantage of this.

Since this book covers a lot of your life and you experienced and saw a lot of what was in this book, what was it like to write “Life Upon the Wicked Stage”: Director’s Cut?

What struck me most in doing the book was how much the writing took me back in time. Every day when I sat down for my three or four-hour sessions of work, I was transported back in time, back to summer mornings thirty-five or forty years ago. I vividly remembered people and places and shows I hadn’t thought about for seemingly a lifetime. Writing the book became an exotic time-travel-like experience for me. (When former actors and technicians heard I was working on the book, many of them contacted me, and we rekindled old friendships and shared old memories, thereby furthering my feelings of time travel).

What do you hope that readers will take from this book?

I hope the book brings back memories of our thirty-four years of productions, of opening nights and strikes and rehearsals. I want readers to recall the hundreds and hundreds of people involved in Summer Theater and the thousands of performances we gave. I hope it brings back a smile and a memory.

Is there anything else that you would like to add?

Given the changes in economics and audience tastes, it seems unlikely Summer Theater as we knew it can ever return to Eau Claire. Everything has become too expensive, too difficult, too complex. Audience tastes have changed; people have moved on with their careers; the competition has become too intimidating. TV offerings, film, sports, local music festivals, etc. all are greatly expanded and have become too difficult to compete with.

But Summer Theater accomplished what we set out to do. Over fifty of our people now work professionally on Broadway, in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Minneapolis. Hundreds of our student actors, designers, directors, and technicians were able to learn more about their craft. Thousands of Chippewa Valley residents came to enjoy and appreciate the art of theater more due to our work. The number of then-young children who saw our work and decided to launch their own careers in theater has been tremendously gratifying.  

Looking back, our thirty-four summers became golden to me and, I hope, to the community – but can never return. 

(If you read the letters in the back of the book, you will gain a better appreciation of audience reactions.)

The theaters of the Chippewa Valley were all influenced by our work. For example, the Chippewa Valley Theatre Guild, the Eau Claire Children’s Theatre, Fanny Hill Dinner Theatre, etc. were all conceived and initiated by former UWEC-Summer Theater performers, directors and technicians. Summer Theater at the University was in large part the start of theater in the Valley. I’m very proud of that.

Finally, during the several readings/book signings I’ve done throughout the area, it’s been extremely gratifying to meet former performers and technicians and to hear about their families, lives, and successes.

Exploring Children’s Literature, Writing Processes, and Libraries with Rob Reid

Image: Volume One

by Chloe Ackerman

Librarians open doors and create portals to thousands of possible worlds. Rob Reid has worked much of his life to show to young kids that libraries are fun places. When he worked as a librarian he toured libraries and performed raps that he wrote using the names of children’s books. Now he’s a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire where he teaches how to use children’s literature to future educators.

Rob Reid explains his process and motivation for writing the songs, activities, and musical activities for his new book, 200+ Original and Adapted Story Program Activities, in this interview.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: What has had the most influence on you as a writer?

ROB REID: I have always been a writer but not always a published writer, and I found that my published niche was writing for my peers. Before I came to the university where I teach children’s literature, I was a children’s librarian in public libraries both here in Eau Claire and in Pueblo, Colorado. I came up with a lot of original ideas to kind of encourage kids to come to the library and hopefully make them lifelong book lovers. Then I found out that my peers were really interested in what I was doing. Then I made a connection with the American Library Association. They have a publishing arm called ALA Editions and they bought my book Children’s Jukebox which was a subject index of children’s recorded music. So if a daycare worker came in and said they want a song about friendship or frogs there wasn’t any research tool like that out there. I listened to about 200 children’s recordings and divided up the subject headings. I found the publisher then when that book was published they said, “what do you want to do next?” Which is something you want to hear an editor say. Then I was doing multigenerational story programs for grandma and grandpa or mom and dad and the kids and we called it family story time. That was the second one. I was lucky to find that publisher because then they kept saying what’s your next idea and so I have published 13 books with the ALA. This is my 20th book overall and 13th with them. The marketing editor and I are calling it the lucky thirteen. 

What is your writing process?

I basically pitch an idea to an editor, they say let’s go with it, then we set up a deadline that looms over my head for a year. I don’t write well without a deadline, and sometimes I do other kinds of writings too, so I do my own little deadlines. I find that kind of crucial for me, and it helps to be in a teaching environment as well because you have deadlines all the time. It helped my writing to quit the library field and come over here to UWEC because I used to work a nine to five job. I had four kids at home, they are all grown up now, and once everybody was done eating and in bed, I would try to write at night and I was exhausted. Over here at the university, I can have an early morning class, a mid-afternoon class, and in between grading and meeting with students I’m still fresh, and I have an hour or two to write. So that is helpful. 

What is your process for writing the songs, dances, story programs, and activities that go into your books?

I sit in a chair and a lot of the material comes because I want to match an activity with a particular children’s book. This is what librarians do with story programs and then follow it up with a finger play, musical activity, or a movement activity. You probably grew up knowing “The Wheels on the Bus” and “We’re Going on a Bear Hunt” and I got tired going on a bus or going on a bear hunt over and over, so I started “We’re Going on an Elephant Hunt” and it created that new version of that old thing or instead of the wheels on the bus it’s “The Wheels on the Sports Car”. 

It’s not all just adaptation, it’s a lot of original stuff too. I’ll have a picture book in mind, and I’ll think back and I go “what would be a fun activity to do with it?” I like to fill up a legal pad with just broad ideas, then put them together, go to the computer, and take different verses that work well together then read or sing them aloud. It takes several passes before I finally have something. Then I like to test it on somebody besides myself. When my kids were little they were around so I could test it out on them. My wife is, unfortunately, the person now. 

As I say, in one of my books I get as much satisfaction coming up with a little four-line poem as I do with a 50,000-word book. A lot of it is poetry, it’s almost all poetry if you boil it down. I get a lot of inspiration from camp songs and things like that. I do a lot of audience participation stories where the kids make sound effects to an original story. A lot of it is just sitting back in a chair and just having a pen and a paper and just starting to scrawl stuff. 

Are there any lessons that you hope the teachers, librarians, parents, and kids who use your programs and activities will take away from this book? 

The main thing is that the library is a fun place to go. I did a lot of outreach as a librarian with these activities and stories. I would get in front of groups of kids, and if nothing else if they see me and say, “hey, there’s that guy from the library,” and tell their parents, “let’s go down to the library.” You try to make lifelong library users, and, I’ve written about this in Volume One, libraries are as relevant today as they have ever been despite everybody thinking the internet’s here, we don’t need it. You know the L. E. Phillips Memorial Library had 400,000 people go through their doors last year. Almost half a million people, so don’t tell me the library is not relevant. 

Why do you want to write this book specifically?

I used to have a contract with Library Sparks Magazine where in every issue I would have an article, like a lesson plan for Story Time, and I would always like to have original stuff in there. Then the magazine went out of business, and I’m kind of at the age now where I don’t write like this as much anymore; I have other writing projects that I am putting my energy into. So I realized that some of the older books that are 25 years old or so, they’re not necessarily out of print, but people aren’t buying them as much now. This would be kind of fun to pull all that material that people might not have access to anymore and put it in one place, kind of like a one-stop shop 200+ ideas for mostly a children’s librarian, or it could be a parent or a teacher to use with kids. We collected them all together. Like here I have a bunch of “Hello” activities divided up into different themes “animal”, “my world”, and “the literary world”, that’s where I put the library raps. We have some spoonerism stories, that’s where you take parts of words and flip them around so I have some original ones of those. Instead of telling the story of “Little Red Riding Hood”, I tell it as “Little Rude Riding Head” and throughout the story, it’s “Once a time upon there was a gritty little pearl named Little Rude Riding Head…” then the kids try to decipher it. Then there are some “Goodbye” activities too, and I have a picture book called Wave Goodbye that’s based on a poem, “Wave high, wave low, I think it’s time, we gotta go. Wave your elbows, wave your toes, wave your arms, wave your nose…” That kind of stuff. We reprinted the lyrics of that in here, too. The idea was that rock star’s have greatest hits albums, so that’s like my greatest hits album. 

Is there anything else you would like to share?

People will probably gawk at the price a little bit. It’s a pricey book because ALA Editions is a publisher geared towards institutions versus individuals. So schools buy it, libraries buy it, you can get it right now through ALA Editions Publisher, I just checked Amazon they don’t have a price listed yet, but they will have it up there soon. If you gawk at the price, then that’s understandable, it’s $50, but it’s a lifetime’s worth of material especially if you are working with young children. 

An Interview With Amanda

by Emma O’Shea 

This past week, I got to chat with Amanda Zieba; a young adult novel author, professor and avid writer. We talked about what she has in the works for her new publishing venture, her opportunities for writers on her website and the content of her blog. 

Emma O’Shea: Can you delve into the phrase "word nerd" and how it correlates to your style of writing and teaching?

Amanda Zieba: I love everything about words. I love their power, their precision, their diversity. I love the entertainment and joy they bring into my life. I love consuming words and using them to create. Words are amazing. When it came time to write my author bio and set up my website, these themes emerged again and again. I decided to call myself the “word nerd” because it satisfyingly encompassed all the ways I love words, and succinctly defined me.

Can you tell me a little bit about your venture with KWiL publishing and what you're working on now?

KWiL is a new traditional publishing company in Milwaukee. I met Abby Nies Janowiec, the founder and president, at a Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) event last year, and we hit it off right away. Throughout the past year, we have been working on taking the exciting concepts of geocaching and regional/state facts and molding them into a “read it again” worthy early chapter book. The first book in this series is in the nearly-finalized manuscript stage (illustrations soon to come!) and has a planned release date in spring 2020.

What book(s) have fortified you as a writer?

My answer for this question isn’t going to quite match up with the project I mentioned above, but the overall lesson is something that has deeply impacted me as a writer. Author Kimberly Brubaker Bradley wrote the Newbery Honor Award-winning novel, The War that Saved My Life and its sequel, The War I Finally Won. These novels have been very instrumental in my thinking as a writer. In them, Kimberly tackles very tough topics. Neglect, war, alcoholism, reactive attachment disorder, self-worth, physical disabilities. This woman is fearless on the page and does not back away from anything. And yet, she is gentle. At no point in time do her stories feel inappropriate or inaccessible for young readers. And THAT skill truly amazes me. Holly Black is another children’s writer who tells honest stories about hard things in a way that does not “dumb it down” for kids. Kate DiCamillo is yet another. It is their stories of real life, told honestly for children, that fortifies me not only as a person but as a writer who aspires to do the same.

Could you tell me a bit about your blog and what got you started?

I love my blog. I am proud of my blog. I probably spend more time writing my blog than anything else. Every Wednesday I post a piece of writing wisdom. It may be a tip or technique, or about a helpful resource I found, or an inspiring book I read. Sometimes I share writing prompts or pieces of a workshop that I have taught. Occasionally I share a short story. I post a lot of different things, but the intention and purpose are always the same. TO HELP WRITERS. When I first started taking my writing seriously (about seven years ago) I was hungry for writing wisdom. But everywhere I looked, help seemed inaccessible due to distance, price or exclusivity. It was so frustrating (not to mention demoralizing). Now that I have some knowledge, I want to share it. Not only that, I want to make it as easy as possible for people who are interested to get it. So, I give it away, one piece at a time, one Wednesday at a time, on my blog.

What does literary citizenship mean?

Being a good literary citizen means contributing to the literary world in any positive way possible. Not sure what I mean? Look at the Chippewa Valley Writers Guild. The Guild is a role model literary citizen. Through planning events, lifting up writers, sharing literary news and resources, offering residencies and so much more, they are making the literary world a better place. THANK YOU CVWG! Being a literary citizen is awesome because, in addition to helping others, you are also able to grow and learn and experience writing in new ways.

Are there any new opportunities for writers in the works?

One opportunity I am really excited to share is Story Seedlings. Writing a story is hard work and knowing how to start can sometimes feel like the biggest part of the battle... especially when you’ve never written a story before. Story Seedlings is a digital download product that features 24 prompts that will help you construct your story, one scene at a time. Specific story elements that are covered include characterization, world-building, conflict (internal/external) and resolution. In addition to the prompts, I offer tips and resources to enhance your story. Story Seedlings is also an excellent way to build a daily writing habit.

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If you want to know more about Amanda’s work and her opportunities such as Story Seedlings, check the links below! 

• http://amandazieba.com/products/storyseedlingsindependent

• www.amandazieba.com

Chippewa Valley Book Fest's Past, Present, and Future: An Interview with Fest Co-Chair Mildred Larson

by Chloe Ackerman

The Chippewa Valley Book Festival began on Monday, October 15th and goes through Thursday, October 25th, spreading literary events across the Chippewa Valley. The festival’s lineup includes a variety of events like writing workshops, dinner discussions, events for children, and much more, so there is something for everyone!

I had the chance to sit down with Mildred Larson, a co-chair of the festival, who has been with the Chippewa Valley Book Festival since the very beginning. We talked about how it has grown over the years and what she is looking forward to in this year’s festival.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: How did the book festival start?

MILDRED LARSON: The book festival started out as a partnership between the L. E. Phillips Memorial Library and the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center 19 years ago. I was working at the public library, we had a grant from the American Library Association for a series of authors and discussions, and we needed a co-sponsor separate from the library. We found the Literary Arts Committee from the Eau Claire Regional Arts Center. Their representative was Karen Loeb, now a retired UWEC English department faculty member, so she and I did that grant. It just seemed to work well, and I think that’s how it got started. We were able to get a few more grants to bring more authors in so obviously it wasn’t the size of the current festival. At first, it was called The Festival of the Turning Leaves. I think people didn’t quite get the pun of turning pages in a book and fall, so that was kind of lost. We decided to change the name to something more obvious, and it became the Chippewa Valley Book Festival.

Many people have helped with the festival over the years, but the UWEC English department has been very helpful all along. Nadine St. Louis, who has passed away, was an English professor and poet and one of the first chairs of the book festival committees. After she passed away, we started to have a memorial poetry reading at the festival in Nadine’s honor at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation. The theme of this year’s reading is called Words Without Borders: A Celebration of Poetry in Transition. It’s at 4:00 p.m. on Friday, October 19th.

How has the Chippewa Valley Book Festival grown since it began in 2000?

It’s grown in a lot of different ways; we have expanded the number of days, and we’ve expanded to include more locations. This year, we have programs in five public libraries: the Eau Claire Public Library, and then also in Menominee, Chippewa Falls, Altoona, and Fall Creek. We’ve tried various locations around town, for example, we have had programs for several years at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation. We have programs on university campuses, and this year for the first time we have a program at UW-Stout.

We’ve also added different kinds of events, such as writing workshops and a theatre event. The biggest addition has been authors in the public schools. We have ten authors coming to public schools in Eau Claire, Menominee, and Mondovi so it varies each year. It’s a wonderful experience for the kids. We have writing workshops for children and a Young Writers Showcase.  For the showcase, young writers submit writing to be selected by English honors students at UWEC.  Those whose work is selected will read at the Grand Theater in Eau Claire on Sunday, October 21st in the afternoon. It's fun and lively, and the children are excited to read to an audience.

What are you most excited for in this year’s Chippewa Valley Book Festival?

I am most excited about moving some of our programs into the Pablo Center. Barstow & Grand, David Treuer’s Native Americans and the Imagination, and then the third one at the Pablo Center is Caroline Fraser, author of Prairie Fires: The American Dreams of Laura Ingalls Wilder. David Treuer’s talk will be in the JAMF Theatre, the Barstow & Grand release party will be in one of the rehearsal rooms, I believe, and then the final one, Caroline Fraser, will be in the big RCU Theatre which is a large auditorium. So we will be using three different spaces in the Pablo Center.

What kind of connections do the authors in this festival have to the Chippewa Valley?

We have local authors and we also have authors coming from Los Angeles, California, Spartanburg, South Carolina, and other faraway locations. This year we have three authors who are regional or local, there is Nickolas Butler who is going to be at UW-Stout, there’s Thomas Pearson who is going to be at the Fall Creek Library talking about frac sand mining, and then Molly Patterson who will be at the Menominee Public Library. Every year we have sort of a mix of local and regional writers and writers from around the country.

What do you hope those who attend The Chippewa Valley Book Festival events will take away from them?

I mostly hope they enjoy themselves. We look for authors who are going to be exciting presenters and we have scheduled a great range of types of literature and topics, so people should be able to find whatever’s of interest to them. For writers, we hope some of them will be inspired by the writers we bring, and then the people will maybe find some reading they want to follow-up with.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Because it’s a long festival, it’s sometimes hard to get all the events out in front of people. I hope people will go to the website and look for more information on the authors and the programs. I hope that they will be coming all the way through October 25th when we have two very excellent programs; there’s Molly Patterson and there’s Heather Swan who is going to be at the Chippewa Falls Public Library. She has a book about honeybees, and it’s a very beautiful looking book. I am certainly hoping that people will continue right through the 25th of October.

Telling the Truth about the Middle East through Cathy Sultan’s New Novel Damascus Street

Cathy Sultan

By Chloe Ackerman

Writer Cathy Sultan grew up in Washington D.C. where she yearned to know more of the world. In 1969 her wish came true when she met her Lebanese husband and moved with him to Beirut, Lebanon. She quickly fell in love with the city. When the Lebanese Civil War broke out blocks away from their home in 1975, they continued to raise their family in Beirut until it was no longer manageable.

Cathy Sultan uses her experience and unique knowledge of the civil war in Lebanon to write her latest book Damascus Street, the sequel to The Syrian. Sandy Tolan, author of Children of the Stone, which was a 2015 L.A. TimesBook of the Year finalist, wrote "Her insights into the region's history and politics go far deeper than your average thriller, exploring U.S. imperial meddling, the heartbreak of Palestinian refugee camps, and the complex and fragile construction of Lebanese society. Damascus Street will stay with you."  Damascus Street recounts the story of American physician Andrew Sullivan, whose fiancée is kidnapped by an important Lebanese ex-political figure. This book follows Sullivan’s thrilling mission to get her back. The following is an interview with Cathy Sultan about her latest book.

CHLOE ACKERMAN: Your book Damascus Street tells the story of a man whose fiancée was kidnapped in Syria by a former intelligence chief after a civil war in Lebanon. What is your writing process for such a serious topic 

CATHY SULTAN: I think it is my ability to imagine the impossible. After all, I am writing about the Middle East, and particularly Lebanon, which I know intimately, and where skullduggery is an everyday occurrence.

This book includes many specific dates and historical events that took place in the Middle East; what kind of research was involved while writing this book?

I am a news junkie and so I read extensively about events as they unfold across the Middle East. Most of the research in the book is first-hand knowledge and other than fact-checking on some events and dates, I needed little research. Some of the events in the book, like the explosion that took the life of an important intelligence chief, happened a block from my apartment. Our building shook and I was there to cover it first-hand as the aftermath was reported. He was such a colorful, shady, and important figure with four different passports, and once the rumors began flying about who he actually was and what he did, I began collecting any and all articles I could get my hands on, assuming I would get to use it in some future work. When I got to that part of Damascus Street, I knew it was the right moment to get out my notes and reconstruct his assassination, the details of which, without much invention on my part, were true. 

Are there any challenges you face as both a fiction and a nonfiction writer?

Other than accepting the challenge from my editor to take on fiction, I have not faced many challenges. Writing fiction is actually more fun. No footnotes, no intense fact-checking and I get to use my imagination, which works overtime, due, no doubt, to the exciting life I have had the privilege of living. I don't rule out returning to nonfiction, particularly if Lebanon is attacked, but in the meantime, I feel that fiction gives me the vehicle to tell what I perceive as the truth, only through fiction I get to hook into fast-paced thrillers which makes it easier for the reader to learn something while enjoying a good read.

According to your website, you wrote the memoir A Beirut Heart: A Woman’s War as a project for your children. What made you want to write the novels Damascus Street and the first book The Syrian?

Yes, I began writing A Beirut Heart for my children, but I soon discovered that it was also a way to mourn my loss of a city I loved. Although I didn't know it at the time, I was also discovering a way to combat what came to be called PTSD. For a very long time, I could not even read sections of A Beirut Heart without crying. Over the years I have gotten better but the trauma of war never disappears. On the upside, the experience of war has not only defined my life, it has driven my motivation to better understand the destructive forces of conflict across the Middle East and to place blame where I know it belongs.

The trilogy which includes, to date, The Syrian and Damascus Street, centers on regime change in Syria. The characters involved in carrying out the West's agenda, and those willing to risk their lives to stop such an atrocity, are the people I want to see rule our world. I know for a fact that our mass media has distorted the news coming out of Syria, and I took it as a challenge to refute those reports and incorporate more accurately what is really going on in the region.   

On your website, you explain how it was frustrating before you wrote your memoir that when you wanted to tell stories about your time living in Beirut during civil war, no one seemed to want to listen. Have people approached you since you started writing your books to share any of their stories relating to the Lebanon Civil War? 

I did find it frustrating and at times hurtful when no one initially wanted to hear me talk about my life in Beirut during the war. Once A Beirut Heart was published attitudes changed. People's aversion to things they can't comprehend is part of human nature. I also attribute that attitude to the fact that we as a country have never had to face the challenges of a war. A conflict far from home enables us to "turn it off" and pay it scant attention. When we are confronted with someone who actually lived through one of those wars, it disrupts our complacent lives and makes us uncomfortable. State-side, no one has approached me about their own Beirut stories, but in Beirut, among my friends, we often reminisce about the years we shared together and that forever changed our lives.

What do you hope the readers will take from this book?

I hope my readers will better understand the West's intervention in Syria and the motivations behind such destruction and upheaval. I also hope readers will realize mass media oftentimes, with its close affiliation with the military, industrial complex, has a political agenda in promoting war. Remember Iraq and the weapons of mass destruction lies!

To purchase Damascus Street, visit The Local Store